USA Mission Experience to San Fransico

at my local Springville PW meeting I began my research about services in Utah Valley?  Kathleen Bowen is a great resource. This morning. I read this: Luke 19:20. "If they keep quiet, the stones will cry out".   I read this from The Hour of Land by Terry Tempest Williams Cesar Chavez wrote during one of his hunger strikes, "When we are really honest with ourselves, we must admit that our lives are really all that belong to us. So it is how we use our lives that determine what kind of men we are. It is my deepest belief that only by giving our lives do we find life.  I am convinced that the truest act of courage, the strongest act of manliness, is to sacrifice ourselves for others in a totally non-violent struggle for justice."

Our group remained at the Mercy Center.  We had speakers from Puente community resource center and Booker T Washington Community Service Center come to share their work.  Puente serves rural agricultural south coast areas through community advocacy leveraging resources to foster economic prosperity and security.  This region has many of the problems of the larger communities however the resources are more spread out.  Puente a services are a health clinic, dental care, education child care driver education , legal services and counseling for victims of domestic violence and mental health.  The help the hard working people dream and achieve their dreams.  They are funded by county grants, foundations and individual donations.  Housing is a major concern.  A rent for a trailer is $1000 a month.  They have a ESL cafe where people gather to share customs and conversation while learning language.  They also have a tradition of Posada where Joseph and Mary look for shelter just as people today search for room at the inn.    In the afternoon Patricia Scott from Booker T Washington Community Service Center came to tell us of the progress of building an affordable housing development and community center that will provide academic, career services recreational and health support services as well as a youth radio station. There will be 24 units for youth  who have grown too old for the foster child program but still need to transition to life as adults.  There will be 24 units of affordable housing for adults.  She told us of the years of struggles with law suits and neighbors that make this center a reality.  This is also a project that has changed to provide service to a changed community as gentrification has pushed out African American and Japanese American residents.    In the late afternoon each of the synod representatives shared their plans to interpret and act as a result of this experience....to be compassionate.       We had a final Bible study out of Matthew.  The story is of Joseph, Mary and Jesus as refugees hiding from King Herod.   Farewells and hugs abounded with a promise to meet again in Louisville at the church wide gathering. 

USA Mission Experience day 7.   Our group boarded the BART train for the Tenderloin district and a meeting with the San Fransisco Department on the Status of Women.  Emily Murase gave us information and an explanation of the work since 1998 of San Fransisco as the first city in the world to adopt the principles of the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Domestic Violence Against Women, CEDAW.  The three requirements to become a CEDAW City are 1. Analysis of the city 2. Establish an over site body 3. Allocate funding.Their grants programs funds 24 community based agencies to address domestic violence, sexual assault and human trafficking.There are 6 staff members and a budget of $7 million which is a fraction of the $9.6 billion  city budget.  Emily emphasized that a proportional part of the budget should be dedicated to the needs of women and we need to hold the government accountable notable to this standard.  Because of the work of the department on the status of women in San Fransisco a homicide of 95 women in 2005 was improved to 0 homicides in 2010-2014.  She talked about the profit a pimp could make with four women in a year $600,000 tax free.  Selling of guns and drugs is less lucrative because they are gone after the sale. In the afternoon we met with Glenda Hope the founder of San Fransisco Safe House and Jessica Lee the Executive Director.  Glenda heard the call to create the safe house and began the quest by applying for a PW Birthday Offering of  $.5 million.  She bluffed her way into purchasing the land for $ 850,000 with only the promise of the Birthday offering.  Glenda's idea became a reality affordable housing that has beauty, safety and is a place of dignity and healing.  The key she said was to grow to the place where your love for women is greater than your rage for their abuser.  "We must remember that the ground at the foot of the cross is level." Jessica told us about the ten bedroom facilities that allow women to heal and grow for 18 months, services on the street for women on the waiting list. We end d our day with Bible study on Joseph and his brothers a sibling rivalry that involved selling of a human.  We reflected on our experience think of how to interpret this experience as we travel home to our Synod sisters.